CounterCurrent: Week of 08/19/24
Greetings from the beach! This week I am vacationing with my family down the shore, so this edition of CounterCurrent was written ahead of time so that I can soak up the rays in tranquility—I hope readers of CounterCurrent have also gotten to enjoy a summer vacation before lower temperatures drive us inside.
In last week’s newsletter, we mentioned the American Association of University Professors’s (AAUP) position change on academic boycotts. Many have taken notice of the AAUP’s “Statement on Academic Boycotts” including Inside Higher Ed, various other news outlets, and those of us at the National Association of Scholars (NAS)—notably, NAS Director of Science Programs J. Scott Turner on his Substack page, and NAS President Peter Wood.
The AAUP’s reversal of their nearly two-decade stance on academic boycotts signals their movement away from academic freedom—something the AAUP vigorously defended since its conception but has slowly drifted away from—toward academic coercion.
Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure at the AAUP spearheaded this recent reversal of the “no boycotts” stance taken back in 2005. But many are probably wondering, why is the issue of academic boycotts back to haunt academia? Well, as Peter Wood says, “it is not hard to take a guess.”
As a bit of history, during the Second Intifada (2000-2005), the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel was devised by Palestinians to pressure Israel and exported to American college and university campuses by 2005. Soon after, Israeli institutions found themselves on the receiving end of academic boycotts. The AAUP denounced the boycotts, stating that they struck “directly at the free exchange of ideas.” And the issue of academic boycotts mostly faded from public interest, with only a few flare ups over the years.
Currently, calls for boycotting Israeli institutions are back with a vengeance. Since October 7, 2023, displays of anti-Semitism have spread like wildfire on campuses around the nation. Coupled with the BDS movement and its collegiate branch—i.e., Students for Justice in Palestine chapters—anti-Israel sentiment is high again in academia. This time around, however, the AAUP has dropped its former position on academic boycotts like a child vying for the cool, new toys of another. Wood aptly details this shift,
The AAUP appears to be ready to abandon more than a hundred years of advocating for principled neutrality among faculty to lurch into support for academic boycotts. It is, however, a sly statement and employs finesse to advance its dubious cause. There is no mention of Israel or BDS. Rather, the AAUP employs what would be called in billiards a ‘bank shot.’ The advocates of some boycotts, we are told, ‘legitimately seek to protect and advance academic freedom and fundamental rights of colleagues and students who are living and working under circumstances that violate that freedom.’ And so, it is perfectly reasonable to burn down academic freedom in American colleges and universities to advance the cause of academic freedom elsewhere.
NAS firmly believes that academic boycotts still strangle the free exchange of ideas. Thankfully we are not alone, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression has expressed its dissatisfaction.
The AAUP’s decision will have consequences. It is likely that other organizations will follow suit, relaxing their opposition to academic boycotts and exposing their members to the vile stain of anti-Semitism and censorship from colleagues. We have already seen the American Anthropological Association join the party, approving a boycott of Israeli institutions two months before Hamas thugs and Jew haters crossed the Israeli border.
With fingers crossed, we at NAS hope that the freedom minded members of these organizations are able to hold back the approval of such boycotts. But if they can’t, we will happily accept the dissenters with open arms.
Until next week.
CounterCurrent is the National Association of Scholars’ weekly newsletter, written by the NAS Staff. To subscribe, update your email preferences here.
Photo by Mike Ferguson/AAUP on Flickr, edited by Kali Jerrard (Black & White effect)
